


Knight in shining armour

by SkyEventide



Category: Original Work
Genre: 15th Century, Blacksmithing, Class Differences, France (Country), Frenchmen, Historical Accuracy, Jousting, M/M, Nobility, Renaissance Era, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 10:30:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18313733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyEventide/pseuds/SkyEventide
Summary: The king is coming to town and a tourney is being hosted in his honour. Serge is a blacksmith and just acquired a new client, a Comte, who wants a new jousting armour and is incidentally also smoking hot.





	Knight in shining armour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nary/gifts).



> This story was written for the Smut Swap 2019, for Nary! She has a long and cool selection of stories and fandoms in her profile so make sure to check her out.  
> (I hope you like this story, I had fun writing it.)

 

 

 

A smith handles the flames, turns one thing into another.

Serge stacks the logs on top of each other, building a little pyramid. It’s good, dry wood. He buries it under a mound of dirt and, with his shovel, carves out a hole at the bottom, on the side. With his hands, one at the top, taking away a few handfuls of it into his cupped palm.

He kneels onto the disturbed soil and lights the fire into the lower hole, giving it birth and strength. The wood, starved of air, it’ll turn black, charcoal for his metalwork.

Standing up, he groans, his back aching. He pats his hands together, rubbing the dirt away, watching it fall down to his boots. A line of smoke, fine like an etching, rises from the mound into a darkening sky.

*

A stranger approaches when the sun’s going down red, a giant forge on the horizon. Serge would say God’s a smith, if it weren’t some form of heresy.

A stranger, yes, on a damn good horse – a war horse, if he knows anything of them, and other four behind it.

The road’s dust is going to be disturbed many times over with the king’s arrival, his liminal solitude’s going to be trampled many times over. But it means work, and he’s come to terms with it.

Serge leans against the old beam that holds up the smithy’s ceiling, the fires dying behind him, his arms crossed, the heavy apron still bound around his waist. The five come closer and slow down their pace, until it’s obvious that they mean to stop by.

It’s three men carrying their lord’s things, stuffed into bags hanging from the horses’ sides, a varlet, and a knight, hooded, the light playing strange games on a shaven face like baby Jesus’ buttocks. The horse huffs like a pair of bellows.

« Might you be a farrier, good man? »

Serge clears his throat and spits on the ground between them. « Sure, I might be. »

The knight flashes a smile. « Might you have water too? »

« Over there in the well. » His finger points towards the side of the smithy, where the metal bucket hangs from a chain over the dark hole.

The knight gathers the reins and dismounts at once, and so does the varlet, who takes the reins from his lord’s gloved hands. A third man descends and goes over to the well, Serge guesses to satisfy the lord’s thirst.

« I’ll bring you my horse in the morning », the knight says. « So that I can take a good look at those armours you have hanging as well. »

The water sloshes in the background as the bucket goes down. Serge watches as the hooded man looks behind him, into the smithy – he can’t see the eyes, but he’s met and dealt with nobles enough to recognise an assessing gaze. Nothing to fidget about, though. He’s served the marquis and the town suitably before, and he’ll serve the king if it’s asked of him. This one, he can serve too.

« Not going anywhere, monsieur. Take your time. »

The varlet comes to his lord with a cup filled with the well’s water and the man drinks. He smiles against the cup like he’s heard something funny, then wipes at his mouth. « Times goes fast », he declares, turning. The one-shouldered cape swings with him as he mounts. Settled now on his war horse, he adds, « There’s never enough of it. »

Like that, they’re gone, heading down the dark road, towards the thick of the town.

*

Dawn’s ashy colour evens out the earth.

Serge separates the good coke from clinker, the first going back into the forge, the second staying on the shovel, to be thrown away.

Woodcutters, and peons shape and hammer at the terraces they’re building up for the jousting games, the structure growing onto the open space on the right of the nearest house, where inhabiting is not quite communal and rather more alike the cropping up of trees in between large fields.

Serge doesn’t look up from his work until a clop of hooves comes closed and eventually stops by the forge.

Though early, the knight has returned. The morning light washes out the blond hair and the damask of the doublet. The lord smiles as he dismounts, and there’s something self-complacent in the charm – polished and shining as nobility tends to be, the kind of unattainable sheen that could do with a good roll in the hay.

« There », Serge says, « I didn’t go anywhere, after all, huh? »

The man leads the horse in by the bridle. « Indeed, you haven’t. Now, mind you shoeing my horse? »

The animal’s got to be more beautiful than the rider, but that might be because the destrier’s large watery eyes haven’t just begun squinting at the pieces of armour hanging off the wall.

« Sure, monsieur. »

Serge turns from the stalking heron to the jousting horse. He caresses it on the large back and round side, the hair certainly brushed many a time to achieve this lustre. It breathes slowly, warmly – bred and trained to have a presence. And now that it knows he’s there, Serge takes his pincers and hammer from the worktable.

He slides the arm down the horse’s ankle, pulling the hind leg up.

« That », says the knight on his left, « is a fine breastplate, good man. »

Catching the hoof between his knees, Serge breaks away the nails and, gently, like he’d pull a thorn out of his finger, loosens up the shoe. « Name’s Serge. And that is up as a sample. » He begins cleaning, scraping and rasping away the dirt, the dust, all that is gathered under a horse’s feet as it does under men’s boots. He shortens the hoof with the horse pincers. Nice, tidy, and pretty.

« Why, Serge », a huffed sort of laugh, perched somewhere between vibrating warmth and vibrant irony, « might you be able to forge me a new jousting armour before the tourney? »

« The king’s not coming for three more months at least. I might be able to satisfy you decently by then. »

The lord hums. « I would like something better than decently, if that’s within your abilities. »

Serge looks up, and the knight’s right there, watching him work, holding up his chin like his head’s heavy, and tapping a clean fingertip onto his mouth. « Depends on money. »

« Hardly a problem. »

He drops down the hoof and walks away, the old shoe in his hand. He strides across his momentarily invaded smithy and compares the shoe to the new ones he’s got hanging from the wall.  « Depends also on the etcher, if he’s available for embossing designs. I’m guessing that monsieur will want details, gilding, the like. It’s going to take time. Can’t do miracles yet. »

The right size shoe in his hand, Serge turns to face the lord’s smiling.

« I best contact the bishop, then. » A wave of the gloved hand follows. « But jests aside, the very best you can give me in the time you have available shall do. I trust you know how fast you are, yes? »

His hand on the smooth side of the horse again, caressing it with long and slow strokes, Serge pushes down the corners of his mouth and pulls a face. « Sure I do. Might be doable. As long as monsieur doesn’t require a matching set for the destrier. »

*

When Serge walks down the road, he’s greeted by many.

The laundresses coming from the stream, their hands red and cooked by cold water as they grip their baskets of cloth, all greet him, and he huffs something in return.

The drunk by the inn, whose name changes every third day of the week and no one can recall how he was christened, slouches by the empty barrel under the hanging sign. He raises a mug and pulls up a smile though it seems a strain for his face.

Serge tips his hat to him and goes by.

The sight of the fields and the growing silhouette of the jousting terraces hides behind the houses huddling around the hillside, where the town is older, built before it began spilling outside the walls.

He walks following the rivulet of water that slides down a shallow drain, his eyes to the stones of streets he knows too well. He stops by the jeweller’s door, open towards the street. The gate of bars is open too; his own work, that, discounted, as an old favour he doesn’t know if he regrets.

The workshop’s empty except for Valérie. The young woman sits bent over a piece of silver, a pair of pliers in each hand, a large pair of magnifying glasses on her nose, tied tightly around her head. She looks up and pulls away the glasses.

« Serge. »

« Your father’s still ill? »

« Upstairs with a fever, yes. Need something? »

Serge walks in. He moves slowly, touches nothing, does as he’d like others to do when they set foot in the smithy – even though he knows the materials, most of the instruments, and even though he’s seen the girl come into the world yelling like a tomcat.

« I got a big commission », he says, thinking of the knight’s face as he dared mull over the option of armour for his horse too. « Armour for the tourney, whole set. D’you happen to know a certain Comte d’Armagnac et de Rodez? »

Valérie lifts a brow, meaningfully. « Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure. »

« …Right, well. Monsieur wants it _fancy_ , but I can’t do the whole shit myself. Not in three months, at least. If you and your pa take up half the etching and gilding work, though… »

« Same percentage as always? »

« Aye. »

She shrugs her shoulders in her father’s apron. « Doable. »

« I need some help with the etching design too. » Serge opens his gilet, looking for a folded piece of paper.

The knight had pulled away his cape from the doublet, showing him the left half of his chest, where tiny fingers had worked in tiny stitches, embroidering a coat of arms: a shield parted in quarters, two red lions on white background, two golden lions on carmine red.

 _The heraldry of the Comtes d’Armagnac et de Rodez_ , the lord had said, as he stood there, statue-like, waiting for Serge to sketch the design with charcoal. As if the name meant more to an armourer than the width of a client’s chest.

He pulls out the paper, placing it on the bug-eaten wood. Valérie opens it up, squinting and nodding to herself. « Come back in a couple days », she says.

« Sure », Serge answers, turning from the familiar scent and metal-dust. « Greetings. To your parents too. »

*

Whenever the cathedral calls the land to Sunday mass, the toll a clear sound across roofs and fields, Serge wonders whose hands, long centuries before, forged the bells.

As his family was not always of smiths, he thinks, and so does most of town, that it was the ancestors of Marcel, his smithy long-settled along the road that unfurls from town southwards.

Serge stares at Marcel’s white hair and bald centre of the head, sitting several rows in front of him. He doesn’t begrudge the old man his tradition. Not as much as the old man begrudges _him_ his ability.

The high rose window casts its light on the napes of the congregation and the nave hums with the vibration of songs. The bishop stands on top of the small flight of stairs, under the last of the stone arches, a sequence that leads the eye towards the great altarpiece.

The Marquis takes the host of communion first, kneeling. His wife next.

The guests of the castle, one after the other, walk up and kneel on a cushion to take the host in their mouth.

Serge spots the Comte standing – he dresses in red and white, like his heraldry, he’s clean, luminous. Men like that don’t win tourneys. Men like that drink wine and listen to songs, their boots clean, their hands soft.

Serge clenches his jaw slightly as the Comte kneels.

The bishop speaks loud and clear as he offers the host to D’Armagnac’s mouth.

_Corpus Christi._

He cannot hear the amen.

*

Serge uncurls the stripe of cloth in his hands. He’s washed them first in the cold well water, but the stripe still carries old marks of his fingertips, printed on with sweat, dirt, coal. He likes to think some of those stains, just like the measurement marks, are still his mother’s trace.

The Comte stands in the empty space between his worktables, his anvil, and the forge itself. His gambeson is a bright crimson, a kind of cloth that looks like nothing Serge has seen before.

Monsieur is a sore spot, a bright spot. Like mild steel hammered straight at full red heat and then plunged back into the fire.

Serge walks to him, strip in hand.

« Mind raising an arm, monsieur? »

« Of course not. »

The palm downturned, the lord stretches it out and Serge begins from the wrist. He passes the ribbon just above the cuff, all around, then turns to mark down the circumference. Then he stretches the strip from wrist to elbow, then ‘round the forearm, the bicep, and from bicep to shoulder.

He breathes shallowly.

When he made armour for the Marquis, the measurements were given to him by the tailor. He doesn’t look at the Comte, half expecting to be looked at down the bridge of the sharp nose – men like this have an ability to look down on another even when they’re shorter.

Serge walks around him. The light hair falls just below the shoulders in simple waves.

« …I’m going to need to move your hair, monsieur. »

« Oh, by God, go ahead. »

There’s an obvious chuckle in the Comte’s voice. Serge tenses up at the amused, derisive sound. He brushes away the locks over the front and pins the strip to one shoulder, measuring across the back. With the care he’d put into measuring the chest circumference of a sleeping lion, he passes the strip around the Comte, slides it around the gambeson, pinches it about where the backbone hides under the padded garment.

Then the ribcage, then the natural waist.

Serge cannot draw his breath too hard, lest it’s felt.

He marks down the number of notches for each part of the body. A mapping to be moulded, recreated in metal. Then he walks to the front.

He’s not a man who enjoys chatting at great length. Never did. Not the chatting that’s just there to fill the silence.

Nonetheless, when he kneels in front of the Comte to hold the ribbon at the crease of his groin, pulling it straight down to the centre of his knee, Serge really wishes he had something to say. Anything, at all, a scathing remark perhaps. He’d appreciate that.

But he has nothing to say, so he keeps measuring.

From knee to ankle. Then the circumference of the thigh, both at its largest and right above the knee, then around the calf, around the ankle, where the combat boot curves to follow the instep.

Serge looks up only once and – damn the man – the Comte is smiling.

He scrambles to his feet and walks to his piece of paper, writing down the measurements, his face heated like when he works by the mouth of fire. The helm now, the helm and the gauntlets.

He stands in front of the Comte again; his hands rise towards the man’s face. « I must measure you from brow to chin, monsieur. »

The lord is still smiling. Just slightly, just a touch. « I know », he says, with a glee in his voice. « Do I look like this is my first time doing this? »

The Comte’s look settles on Serge, reaches him like a poker to manage the intensity of the forge. The soft crow’s feet around the grey eyes are given a certain tilt by the smile that is a language of its own.

Serge cannot answer. Instead, dumbfounded, he raises the ribbon and stretches it down D’Armagnac’s face, from his forehead, over the tip of the sharp nose, over the mouth, to the chin, dividing it in symmetrical halves. He focuses on the number and then steps to the side to measure the circumference of the head. The Comte’s eyes slide askance and follow him.

When Serge is eventually alone in his smithy again, he stands in suspenseful silence. His silence, _their_ silence too – but for a word of goodbye. He’s breathing without really filling up his chest, still.

He stares at the outline of the Comte’s gloved hand, drawn on paper with charcoal, the guide for his gauntlet. A trace of pressure, a suggestion.

*

Serge has curved the sheet of metal for the breastplate with a pestle of solid iron against a hard, shallow mortar. First a bump, then, heating it in the forge over and over, a whole curve.

He swells up its arch. With a lighter hammer, he evens out the metal’s surface from the inside. The high sound reaches the ceiling as Serge shapes the plate.

It will hug the upper torso, cut where the ribcage ends – where Serge measured –

He figures it pressed to the Comte’s chest, the final picture it’ll cut.

He heats it, hammers at it rhythmically, moulds it into what it will become.

*

The plain, unadorned metal of the armour pieces, its edges still sharp, the centre of it still missing its ridge, lies on the side of Serge’s forge.

He wrote down a day and an hour on a piece of paper, folded it, had it sent to the castle, addressed to the Comte D’Armagnac et de Rodez. He did, briefly, consider a proper note, handwritten by the notary. Then he cursed under his breath – _fuck it_ , he said – and scribbled it with his own hand. The message’s the same, all it changes is the amount of flourish.

Serge has got to concede it – the Comte is punctual.

When the knight walks in, he’s stealing away half the morning; it’s some quality, some ability to take away space and make it his. Noblemen must be like that.

« Show me what you have, Serge », the Comte says with a smile on his lips.

Serge has a lot ready and a lot left to do. He picks up the upper breastplate, the one that covers the chest, and brings it over to the Comte. He turns it so that it will embrace the man’s upper torso. Serge dares look up. « …What’s your name, monsieur? »

The Comte raises his own gloved hands, gloved red, in velvet, to keep the piece of metal in place. « Haven’t I told you? », he answers, his eyebrows rising with more surprise than the question might warrant.

Serge takes a breath, then steps back. « Can’t say you did. » He brings over the lower piece, covering from the ribcage to the hipbones, its central spear rising to the lower area of the sternum. With his hands at its sides, Serge presses it against the Comte’s torso.

The two pieces match exactly, flush against one another, coming to compose the full front section. Not a fingernail passes between the two sheets of metal. Serge is not surprised and as for the Comte… he can see how the man inspects it, how his thin brows move up.

« You mean you want to know my Christian name », the Comte says then. His mouth moves into an infuriating smirk. « Alphonse. Alphonse Jean-Martin. »

« Monsieur shouldn’t worry. » He takes a step to the side and presses both his palms against the metal, keeping it in place. « Not going to take the liberty of using it. Now if monsieur could test the movement range… »

The Comte still smiles as he raises his arms straight ahead, trying to make his own fingertips meet. « Oh, but you should. »

Serge looks at his gloved hands. The gap is small, but present, and the steel by the armpits digs into the gambeson. Then he looks up. Then down – a centimetre of trim to the metal will do – and up again. « …I’m sorry? »

His Lordship _Alphonse Jean-Martin_ quite literally sighs as he drops his arms again. It’s frustration enough to make Serge take hold of the armour pieces and step back.

« Must I spell it out? », the Comte asks. « Might it be that you need a drawing? »

Serge frowns, lowering the breastplate down to the ground. « I don’t… »

Though the Comte comes closer, his head tilted just so, Serge now doesn’t move at all.

« You don’t? »

That is – insinuating. Serge holds the gaze. Bold of him, but he means it. So does Alphonse.

The knight’s face is still clean shaven. Like Baby Jesus’ buttocks, maybe he can’t even grow a beard, the hair’s too light, the cheeks too smooth, like good polished damask.

Once again, Serge’s face warms up.

« No », he says, all his breath trapped in. It comes out at once, as an angry horse’s huff. « No, I do. » Whatever the hell that question was for.

The Comte smiles, the slanted cut of the smirk turning into a gleam over platinum, and, as he smiles, he slowly pulls the velvety gloves off his hands. The red cloth creases and slides away, and then is pushed into the gambeson’s large pocket. Looks like the sun has never once hit the skin underneath.

Serge draws his back up, tense, ready when the Comte walks ahead of another step and a half – and soon the long hands are around his face and the mouth is on his. It’s not a light kiss, nor tentative, nor gentle. It makes his mouth open, his breath catch, surprising him. It draws on… it slows down. And then it breaks off.

Alphonse, however, doesn’t step back. He stands there, gazing at him, cupping his face. « …You _do_ need a drawing, my good Serge, do you not? »

Serge’s shoulders go taut and his jaw clenches. « Well, monsieur, if you want me to just—fucking bend you over the anvil, I can do that. »

« You can, but you’re not doing it. »

Serge stares.

Then he grabs the Comte’s arms, his thick gambeson, and pushes him back, back all the way to the large wooden column that holds up the smithy.

At the impact, the Comte gasps. « Better. Much better. »

Serge runs his mouth down the sharp jaw and the neck’s tendon. His knee pushes up between the Comte’s legs, finding his groin, parting his thighs. Alphonse doesn’t waste any time – he grinds himself down and against that intrusion.

And, fuck, that bulge right there makes Serge’s cock harden accordingly.

One of the Comte’s hands disappears into the gambeson’s other pocket and, when it comes out, it’s holding a vial that is pushed against Serge’s chest.

« What is it—? »

« Take a guess. »

Ah.

Alphonse, in that, hasn’t stopped rolling his hips, now a little lazily.

It’s like being stared at by some leopard-like animal and it makes Serge catch his breath for the heat of it, so very against expectations – where’s the rose pulled out of nowhere, the languid delicacy…

« …Don’t think I can actually do it against the anvil, monsieur. »

The Comte laughs. « The worktable, then. » His hand rises, grabbing Serge’s chin, pushing him away from the column. « Come on. »

Serge steps back, and he doesn’t so much lead Alphonse towards his old sturdy table as he’s brought there, between a tug and a glance.

He takes the Comte by the waist, turns him around, making him stumble. Stuck between the requested roughness and the amazement of it, Serge must surrender to the shudder that manhandling a nobleman gives him. He’s never even _touched_ one! Not the Marquis, not anyone else. Except for this one, that is.

Alphonse is undoing the strings of his own trousers.

Serge watches the garment slip down on solid thighs and their fine blond fuzz. He places a hand in the middle of the Comte’s back, tentatively, and then he gathers his desire, his surprise, and pushes down. He bends Alphonse over and Alphonse… breathes out a little harder.

Serge needs to know, he needs confirmation—he moves his hand between the Comte’s legs, cupping his balls and then forward, taking his cock in his palm like a hammer handle. Alphonse pushes his hips back and Serge finds his arse against his crotch.

The pressure is inviting, the invitation itself plain. He meets it with a little push, a little rub against the naked skin; it causes a low sound in the back of the other’s throat. Serge opens the small bottle, a beautiful silver thing that’d be used to hold alcohol, a good cognac, the sort a knight would drink. Now it holds thick oil that spreads over the calluses on Serge’s fingers.

He dips them down, between the Comte’s cheeks, and rubs at the entrance there. A breath, a moment of inspiration; he pushes two of them in at once. He figures monsieur will like it. He figures he’ll be told otherwise if that’s not the case, too.

But monsieur _does_ like it, monsieur gasps and shoves his ass back towards him again.

« Yes— », the Comte whispers, « now move them. Like that. Add another, come on. »

Serge’s face, chest, and slightly leaking erection are all warm, not least because of the way Alphonse speaks to him. He pushes another finger inside, forcing the muscles’ resistance, curling them all in, moving them in and out slowly. « …Can’t avoid giving orders even bent on a table? »

The Comte, though breathing fast through his nose, laughs. It’s a low, pleased sound, a vibration.  « Don’t waste too much time, now », he says. « Go on. »

Evidently, he can’t.

Serge pulls his fingers out and opens the front of his trousers, cleans the excess oil on his cock. The palms of his hands cup the Comte’s buttocks, then slide to the side, to his hips. He takes his time gripping them firmly, steadying himself, thinking that maybe the damn nobleman deserves a little bit of rough treatment—

He slides the reddened head of his erection against the exposed skin, and then presses in. The oiled entrance gives in and spreads for him, and Serge cannot avoid, cannot help but gasp as he goes inside.

Alphonse presses against him with a hungry eagerness that staggers him.

Serge begins fucking him. He grunts as he pulls out and presses in, he listens to the low pants that leave the Comte’s mouth.

Alphonse’s hand disappears beneath them, his arm moves following the rhythm of the thrusts, thrusts that Serge delivers a touch harder with each movement. The Comte’s ass holds him tightly – but Alphonse doesn’t just _take_ him, rather he pushes back, he rocks himself against him.

The Comte is warm and _eager_ , and Serge can barely believe—he can barely believe how damn good driving himself into and against him is, fucking him to perfect heat, to a final malleability…

« My hair », Alphonse pants.

Serge opens his eyes, blinking. « What…? »

« Grab it. »

Serge stares down at the fine waves spread on the red gambeson and falling to the sides of the sweating cheeks. He blinks and his hand moves into the blond locks, closing them into a loose fist.

« Pull my God-damn hair, Serge. »

He doesn’t stop moving, nor does Alphonse’s hand. His eyes wide with pleasure and continuing surprise, Serge pulls.

The Comte’s back arches, his neck arches, his arse tightens all his muscles around Serge, his breathing quickens irregularly.

Serge lets go of a moan. « You really fucking like it, huh? »

Incredibly enough, Alphonse this time doesn’t answer, lost into the quick motions of his own wrist and, possibly, out of breath for the thrusts too. Serge watches him shudder, listens to him pant. The Comte spills on the floor.

Serge lets go of the fine hair, seeing how Alphonse’s head drops down again, how he rests both his elbows on the chipped worktable, crumpling languidly. He holds his hips again – Alphonse doesn’t seem to be protesting yet – and with his eyes closed, keeps fucking him a little, chases his own pleasure.

Closer, closer, until he finally pulls out of the body’s heat and holds his pulsating erection tight in his fist. Serge comes on the floor too; finally, a good excuse to clean it for good.

The aftermath is all in silence.

Serge was never told how to talk extensively with nobility, especially not nobility he just had sex with.

Alphonse pushes himself to stand straight, runs a hand through his locks, gathers his clothing, his respectability, so to speak. That certain something that makes him look like a Comte, like a shiny knight, and not a man taken on a work surface. Serge perceives the space. He perceives it and lets it be, lets it grow. He lets things shift back to where they should be.

The Comte leans against the table, his trousers up and laced now, his hair relatively in good state. He takes deep breaths, fills his chest nicely and then slowly exhales through his mouth.

His arm is now outstretched as Serge fits the vambrace on his forearm, marking with chalk where the metal needs a further cut.

When the Comte prepares to leave, he smiles, his face brightening, those little wrinkles by his eyes creasing finely. « I do hope the rest of your work will be just as satisfying. »

Serge blinks, and then scoffs, watching him leave.

*

The torrent runs around the town’s hill, around the walls in the east, and the flowing away south-west amongst the houses, gathering into water holes for horses that follow the road and into stone basins for the laundresses.

Valérie’s mother is there every Friday and, though Serge seldom speaks with Anne anymore, he often sees her when he heads towards the town’s gate.

She nods at him, he nods at her, and that’s it.

When she calls him, he always stops, and today is no different.

Anne carries her basket of cloth, balancing it on her hip, her rough fingers (they were always rough) grabbing it by the outer handle. The way she says his name promises something not entirely pleasant, like the frizzle of metal when it too hot and it begins breaking.

« I figure I should warn you », she says.

Serge tilts his head – warning him is a new one – and she continues.

« Marcel came to our house, he asked for Jacques’s help. Well, for Valérie’s, really, until he can get out of bed. »

Now Serge frowns. « What does he need their help for? He’s got a whole smithy and assistants for himself. »

« Who the hell knows, he might have gotten word that you’re working on fancy armour. » Anne arches a brow. « Thought I’d let you know. »

Serge fills his chest with a deep breath and puffs it all out, as if it could get rid of his annoyance and of the creeping sense of uneasiness. « So did Valérie accept? »

Anne scoffs, then adjusts the basket against herself. « ‘Course not. She’s got enough work to do, managing the whole thing herself. If Jacques gets better, well, he might consider the offer. No offense to you. Anyway, that’s all. »

Through an attempted smile, Serge watches her turn her face towards her shoulder and bend her neck to rub her pointy nose against the sleeve. He thanks her – he considers bringing the Comte to the jewellery workshop too, to _really_ underline that he needs this damn etching job _done_.

*

Serge can tell a client from a traveller and a traveller from a thug.

It’s not that he claims to know people, not in the same way he knows coke from clinker or a well-balanced sword from a poor work. But the smithy is on the road, at the edges of town, on the threshold between where the laws of the kingdom are observed and where they are, sometimes, forgotten – the road sees many faces, and so does he.

This red-haired man has strolled in with a swaying sort of gait. « Up to much, blacksmith? », he asks, his eyes settling on utensils like they’re weighing them.

« Work », Serge answers, straightening. He steadies the breastplate over the wedged anvil and leaves it be, for now; he clings to his small hammer, nonetheless.

The man picks up an iron bar and Serge, at once, walks over. « Put that down. »

The bar’s dropped with a clang. There’s, maybe, a beat of silence, a pause. « Relax », the man drawls. « I don’t want to steal anything, alright? Me and my friend outside just have a bit of a project for you. »

Serge points at him with the hammer, moving it like he does when he wants to shoo a cat. « Right. Out, then. »

« Sure. »

Watching the stranger move slowly and step back, Serge frowns; they step into the light of a golden day end and a near-desert street. He glances left and right. « Your friend? Where is he? »

« Right to the side, by your well. »

Serge doesn’t turn the corner. He stops right by it, even though the man careens ahead a little, and sure enough, another stranger stands by the low stone wall; this one’s shorter, he’s got an eyebrow up and the look of someone who’s tired and can’t wait to sit down with a mug of sour wine.

The redhead stops and turns. « …Well? Not coming, mister? »

One step forward. But only one. Serge moves his eyes between the two.

At once, the shorter man groans and moves away from the well, looking briefly at his companion. « You couldn’t do a fucking job properly if it came at you running. »

Serge sees that the stranger now comes at him with a long knife. He sees that they both took out one. He stumbles back, his heartbeat loud, his light hammer raised in front of him – it’s no good for smashing it on people, but it’s something –

The first one lunges forward, and Serge swings his hammer across the air, in an arch. He’s got larger ones inside the smithy – those for flattening and hitting iron –

It’s the two men looking to the side that makes Serge glance in that direction too.

And by the Virgin Mary’s tits, if it isn’t the Comte, in person, his hand at the waist. A long dagger in his grip gleams under the sun.

Serge is not a fighter; he’s a blacksmith, sure, and he can throw a punch or two, but not a fighter. Not where weapons are concerned. He _makes_ them, but he doesn’t _use_ them.

Not like this. Not the way the Comte makes his dagger slide against the man’s knife and then turns it in his hand, not the way he grabs the stranger’s wrist, walking right in front of him.

Serge gasps at the way the Comte shoves his dagger into the man’s throat. The blood spills red like a burst of flame. He stares at the mortal wound, how the would-be assassin collapses to his feet, holding his own torn neck. The blood keeps spurting.

His eyes jump up.

The redhead’s fleeing down the field, that oblique movement of his body so odd and unapt for fast running; but be it boredom or unwillingness to sweat, the Comte has halted by the well and is not following. He turns from the fugitive slowly, first his body, then his neck, and his eyes last.

Serge breathes in and out deeply, watching Alphonse as he bends down to clean his blade over the clothing of the dead man. « They ruined my damn doublet », he murmurs. A streak of red marks the cream of the cloth.

His hand still tight around the hammer, Serge exhales and leans against the wall.

« So », the Comte says, « is it common for highwaymen to make an appearance here? »

« …No. Not very. »

« You might just be unlucky, dear Serge. Or lucky that I was coming here. » A smirk. « Were you planning on killing them with that hammer? »

Serge looks up and frowns. The light shines too bright over the Comte’s hair and clothing, and he squints against the halo. « I’ve got a suspicion on why they arrived. Wasn’t planning on killing anyone. I’d get charged for murder. »

Of course, that wouldn’t concern nobility and, as Serge supposed, Alphonse huffs through his nose like it hardly matters. « Well, I did come here for reasons you might guess, but I lost the mood. So, any progress on my armour yet? »

Serge, at once, thinks of Valérie. « No. No, but I—I’ve got to check on someone. Right now, monsieur. »

The Comte arches his thin brows. « Right now? Who might this be? »

« My etcher. Should interest you too. »

« Your etcher », he drawls. Then, his lips move into a slanted and yet luminous, pleased smile. « It does, somewhat. So lead the way, then. »

*

Serge walks fast and speaks little during their route towards the town. The Comte’s heels hit the cobblestones more noisily than Serge’s worn boots, making his company that much louder. In fact, the man’s very presence with him is worth a look or two from passers-by.

Alphonse keeps up with his pace, though Serge hears him chuckle behind him. « Might it be that the devil is running after you, that you must go so fast? »

« Don’t know, monsieur. Are you the devil? »

There’s an incredulous note in the way the Comte snorts. « I certainly hope not. »

A lizard hurries away from his feet, disappearing into the wall, the stones of the workshop’s façade shining warmly. Serge opens the gate at once. « —Valérie? »

He walks through the open door, disregarding permission in his apprehension. Valérie is there and she’s standing, unharmed. In fact, she startles and turns, her eyes wide, jumping from him to, he guesses, the Comte right behind him. « Serge? What is it? »

His breath a little shortened, a rivulet of sweat going down his neck, Serge blinks and gathers his worry, exhales it away. « Was attacked. Back at the forge, two men with knives… »

Valérie lowers the hand that holds a very fine chisel. Her eyes jump to the Comte a second time, who has walked in and is slowly moving into the workshop, again the stalking heron that Serge remembers from their first and second meeting.

« What? », she asks.

« Yes, well, don’t dwell on it. I thought it might be Marcel’s doing but—just keep your eyes sharp. »

The Comte crosses hi arms and leans against the worktable in the middle of the room; like a pale sun in his cream doublet and cape, with the red streak still in stark, violent contrast, he takes up space as he clears his throat.

Serge, for a moment, gapes. « …Right. And this the Comte D’Armagnac et de Rodez. »

Valérie tilts her head, her eyebrows moving so peculiarly as she takes in Alphonse’s presence. « Ah. Well. Welcome, monsieur. »

The Comte smiles. « So, you are Serge’s etcher, dear? »

Serge intercepts a _look_ , from Valérie. He fidgets.

« I’m _an_ etcher, the shop is my father’s », she answers. « I’m bound to work on monsieur’s armour decorations by a contract. Actually. Would monsieur like to see them and approve them? »

« Indeed. Please, show me. »

Valérie nods and turns to the piles of paper on the table: large rectangles of sketched designs, stacked like sheets of metal. She spreads some over the polished wood, for the Comte to see, and Serge moves towards the door, leaning against the jamb.

He realises, a little stupidly, that he’s still holding his hammer.

*

The next time the Comte returns, he'd been once again not invited beforehand.

Serge, his eyes down on the dark red metal he is fashioning in the shape of the helmet, doesn’t see him or hear him until he’s come deep into the smithy; and, when Serge _does_ see him, Alphonse stands with his hip leaning against the worktable, his arms crossed, his cape the colour of wheat in full summer.

Serge straightens, his eyebrows up.

So, the Comte simply decided to walk in and silently observe, like some cat, and now, exactly like a cat, one that got all the cream, he smiles.

Serge looks at him differently after the attack – (there was no repeat, though he didn’t stop double checking the surroundings even after a long week). He no longer thinks the Comte will pull out a rose and try to read poetry, even if he’s beautiful enough for both.

« Working for me, my good Serge? »

« …Yes, actually. » Serge gestures at the half-done piece.

The Comte’s smile only grows. « Might you be able to afford a pause? »

« Depends », he answers, carefully. « What does monsieur need? »

Alphonse moves gracefully away from the table. He picks up a metal bar lying on it: Serge has got to wonder why everyone feels the need to touch and feel his materials, like they’re there to be fondled. He watches the Comte walk to the wicker chair on the left and sit on it, just like that. Alphonse crosses his legs, the bar sitting across them.

« Some attention, if you do not mind. »

Serge considers answering that _that’s his chair_ , the one where he sits for lunch, sometimes for dinner, where he catches his breath on warm days. He purses his lips and sets his hammer down. « I guess I can do that. »

He walks to the Comte, supposing he’ll want to be caught by his collar and physically pulled away from that chair, but, when he’s close enough, he finds the damn metal bar pointed against his stomach, like a sword.

Alphonse smiles in that languid, burning way, infuriating like a forge that’s too slow to light up when you want it to. « Not like that, dear Serge. Not this time. I’m thinking, rather… », (the blunt tip of the bar turns against his belly as Alphonse rotates his wrist), « that I would quite enjoy your mouth on me. »

Serge breathes in, made speechless by a curious shame.

He’s got no issue with the fucking, but there’s something lewd and knowing in the way the Comte moves his legs apart, to give him space, in the way he drops the metal bar and moves his hand to the opening of his leggings.

Serge gets on his knees with an odd erection throbbing in his own trousers. He takes Alphonse’s cock in his hand and leans down to let it slide between his lips, hearing a pleased hum.

He sucks slowly, experimentally, with the Comte’s fingers touching his short hair. 

In the weeks to come, he does it again, more than once. Alphonse tastes salty and, as it turns out, though he so wholeheartedly enjoys being bent over and taken, it isn’t quite the same when it comes to kneeling. In fact, it’s the other way around.

Serge scoffs over it, thinking it obvious that the nobleman shouldn’t like _doing_ that, but would appreciate it done it _to_ him. He scoffs, yes, but his face burns every time, a mix of annoyance and arousal.

He otherwise never sees Alphonse.

They don’t eat at the same table, the Comte sharing that of the Marquis, do not meet in the marketplace, nor on the way to town. If it weren’t for the armour he relentlessly works on, in-between those visits Serge might as well convince himself that the blond knight and his bright smiles were some sort of fairy-like trick of the light.

*

The wooden structure for the tourney stands finished and proud by the city’s outskirts. When the sun goes down over the fields, sinking in flames, the terraces’ silhouette goes black, blocking out the last of the day. During the morning, it occupies the view. Either way, Serge doesn’t hear the hammering and sawing of the woodcutters, their chatter and yelling.

This morning is chaotic and lively for another reason: for the king, who has come to town at last.

Serge watches the procession of the court between the rows of his fellow countrymen from the door of the smithy. As if every single man and woman had spilled out of their houses to fill up the outskirts, they now press to get a glimpse of the sovereign and welcome him.

The horses, the donkeys, the knights and the serfs all head towards the doors, where painted wooden arches built up for the occasion mark the way to the castle, full of garlands, like an early spring.

The crowd is loud and the sun is high, and Serge doesn’t care to wait long enough to see the king. He goes back inside, into the smithy’s penumbra, where his metal, and his metal splinters, his tools, and the finished product of these month’s labour all lie down in more comfortable silence.

*

The armour, fully gilded, its fluting shaping it in the look of a seashell or of dragon wings of old legend, encloses its owner’s body with weightless dynamism.

Valérie’s etching made a tale of it. One that speaks both of the wealth spent in its making and of the Comte’s House, in the breastplate’s design. And the Comte wears as if his mother had kicked him out of the womb in that very attire.

Serge takes the compliments with nothing but hums and grunts, but he hides some pride behind his crossed arms.

The varlet helps Alphonse out of it, unbuckling the belts that keep the pauldrons, the gorget, all the pieces tied together. Stored in boxes and wrapped in cloth, the armour is carried away on the road, towards the city and presumably the castle. Serge watches it go with melancholic affection, like with a child gently pushed on their way out of the door.

The Comte, stripped back to his gambeson and fighting boots, and all that he’d wear under the metal, sends his varlet and servants away and lingers on. « So, Serge. I have a proposal for you », he says, in the smithy’s solitude, a privacy that they’ve often shared.

Serge, picking up his heavy apron, partner of many a work, raises a brow. « What is it? »

« I am thinking », Alphonse continues, a gloved finger tapping over his lips, « that once the tourney is over, you should come with me. »

That gives Serge pause. He stares, a quite genuine surprise taking over for a few seconds, but the Comte appears to be in earnest, even expectant. « …Beg your pardon? »

« With me, dear Serge. » A smile appears on his lips, a certain bemused note rising in his voice. « To my lands. I’ve quite enjoyed your service and I should like to have it permanently. »

Serge gapes. Answering is all the harder for the lack of a proper question.

His astonishment, though, is clearly obvious enough: Alphonse tilts his head and Serge, at once, shakes his. « I can’t do that, monsieur. »

« You can’t? And why in the world? »

Is that a real question? Well, judging from the puzzled look putting a couple of frowning wrinkles on the Comte’s forehead, it must be. Still, Serge raises both his hands, palm up, a gesture to encompass where they are standing. The dust he occasionally sweeps, the coal he makes and stores away, his tools, the door in the corner, opening to his house, that whole space that is his. « I live here, monsieur. I can’t just… Just _leave_. »

« But of course you can. I would provide you a new smithy, naturally. Larger, with assistants, should you be inclined to take any. » He gestures with his hand. « I simply cannot let you waste away here. Besides, you know that I relish your company. »

Serge has seen Alphonse often enough in this room that, he realises with some horror, he’d grown accustomed to the presence. Now, he takes it in again: the padded gambeson dyed dark red, nothing a common soldier would ever wear; the light skin, that the sun doesn’t often kiss; the solid riding boots.

The Comte D’Armagnac is as much of a sore spot as he ever was. 

Serge frowns at him. « Can’t do it, monsieur. I’m sorry. »

Alphonse blinks. He also turns his face slightly askance, his eyes narrowing. « Is the offer not to your liking? »

Serge’s jaw clenches slightly. His company, for that matter – well, not a commodity. « Just can’t. »

The Comte blinks again, and looks around, and whatever he’s thinking of his smithy, Serge doesn’t _like_ it.

It doesn’t mean that refusing doesn’t make him the least bit nervous. Fuck knows what spurned nobility could do.

But though a certain annoyance crosses Alphonse’s features, he simply waves a hand. « Very well, Serge », he says, his voice an uncommonly stiff snap. « Your armour will serve me well, I’m sure. God bless you. » With his lips pressed in a line, he turns on his heels and is quickly gone, his steps muffled by the dirt outside.

Serge stares at the empty spot, then turns too and marches to his wicker chair. Sitting on it, he blows air out of his nose, wrapped tightly around a simmering anger that very rapidly weakens. He frowns, finding himself closer to a hot disappointment.

*

The day of the tourney, the sun shines bright over heads, hats, swords, and armours. Serge squints against the light and the dust that the horses raise in their runs of the joust.

The townspeople pick favourites and cheer them on basing their choices on arbitrary sympathies, though they’re more likely to cheer the Marquis, as he bears the town’s colours. As for the others, their colours mean little and their heraldry or names even less.

Serge entertains himself listening to the comments of the baker where he buys his bread. She’s sitting right behind him and so amusingly wry.

When Alphonse rides in on the blond destrier that Serge shoed months ago, it’s hard not to concentrate on the armour that he forged for him. How it gleans and glints over the steel and its decorative gilding.  

« More lions », the baker snorts. « Do they all use lions? Do you think they ever kill each other because they stole lion heraldry from their cousin? »

Serge, despite himself, snorts.

He watches as the varlet hands his lord the long wooden lance, striped white and red. He did a good job, with that armour, shaping it so accurately. So did Valérie, with her etching. It really is good work, and he’d be no less than furious if the Comte lost it in the tourney, having to surrender horse and harness.

Breathing in as the two contenders lower the visor of their helmet and hold the jousting lance tightly, pointing it onwards, Serge watches the flag go down.

The horses charge, spurred on. It’s always over so very quickly.

The lance splinters against armour, unseating the opponent, whoever he is, who lands on the dirt. The other lance falls too, its wood bending as it hits the ground. The Comte remains on his horse, makes it turn towards the canopy where the king sits, in the distance.

He basks in the moment of glory and Serge, in the hidden anonymity of the tribunes, breathes out.

He thought many things about Alphonse. By the end of the day, when the sun is setting red, he figures that almost none of them were true, including that men like that cannot win a jousting tourney.

*

The Marquis’ guests begin leaving the castle not a long time later. The town, from overflowing with serfs and members of each noble’s entourage, slowly returns to its calm. It finds again its old self and Serge, though the road is still more often busy, sits gladly by his door to watch the processions of horses, donkeys, mules, and carts as it drifts away towards the fields.

Surprise only catches him when, in the morning’s brightness, the sounds of the terraces being dismantled in the clean air, he spots Anne and Valérie leading a donkey of their own away from town, following a cart.

They do not appear in a hurry, as the carter isn’t either – a man Serge knows, who does business in town and then quietly leaves with a half toothless smile.

He moves away from the wall of his smithy, his eyebrows raised.

The question doesn’t need to be asked for Anne to answer it. « Leaving », she says, simply. « We got offered a better place and position. »

Serge opens his mouth. After the fever took Jacques the two of them have not so many options, true enough, and yet— « Going where? »

« The Comte you made the armour for… », Anne answers, then trails off, gesturing to her daughter.

« He sent a varlet to offer us to work for him. » Valérie snorts and shrugs, adjusting them the shawl on her shoulders. « I suppose that armour impressed him. So we’re going to Rodez. »

Serge squints, struck by confused surprise. « Wait. Did he— Did you— Did you meet him again? »

« Nah. I just said he sent his varlet. » Valérie raises her brows meaningfully. « Short man, brown hair, a beard… »

Serge grunts as he breathes out, gesturing that he doesn’t need the description. A real stupid thought, thinking that Valérie would entertain Alphonse’s… attentions. Unkind even; perhaps to them both.

« So… », he continues after a moment, « you’re going. »

Anne nods. She has deeper eyebags, perhaps slightly swollen eyes. « We must. »

Her daughter tries a smile. « Visit us sometimes, Serge. »

He considers. He also considers, looking at the young woman’s face, that she deserves the offer and the privilege. He’s only got to hope that Alphonse’s varlet phrased it with some more damn tact.

So he smiles back. « Alright. I might, yes. Someday, when I can. »

« Good. We must go, now. »

Serge nods and, to free them of a lengthy goodbye, he steps back.

Anne nods only: no words, though she gives him a rare smile. Valérie waves her hand even when she’s distant, the dust of the road settling on her old shoes.

Once again, Serge leans against his wall, crossing his arms over the rough linen of his shirt. He’s never seen Alphonse again after the tournament, and didn’t receive a visit or messages after the full payment for his work was delivered, inside small studded chests.

Serge was happy with the silence, the lack of contact.

Now he gazes down the road, in the distance, where the cart and the donkey have become smaller and smaller, disappearing towards an accepted offer. He’ll pay them a visit, maybe sooner rather than later, maybe before the autumn comes.


End file.
